Prince

Can You Picture This?

By Stephen Doig

Pastel on Board

Image size approx 64 x 30cm

A contract can be a wonderful thing. It can offer security, predictability, and open doors in exchange for one's signature upon it.

But for the creative soul, there is a dark downside. It is a Faustian pact. You sign away all that is, and can be, your work, your life, for years, sometimes forever. Can you ever fully belong to yourself? You are owned. No matter how well compensated, a gnawing feeling remains, that you dance only to the tune of another.

In those moments, the feral, starving artist becomes the unlikely envy of the artistically bound servant of contract.

Prince broke his chains. Shattering the spell.

He literally pictured it , turning himself into a symbol that no mere contract could contain, constrain, or even name. Unpronounceable. Unchained, and free at last, in love with what he truly was.

There are artists who fight the industry. And then there is Prince who simply refused to be legible to it.

This portrait does not show a pop star. It shows a man who chose freedom over everything, and paid whatever it cost, and never once looked back.